


Order of Operations

by theskywasblue



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Childhood Sweethearts, Inception Reverse Big Bang Challenge, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-27 22:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/984284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames met Arthur when he was eleven, fell in love with him at fifteen...and somewhere along the way he forgot how it all went together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Order of Operations

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for the 2013 Inception Reverse Bang, with [art by the wonderful Kansouame](http://archiveofourown.org/works/980790%22), who is always a pleasure to work with an an endless source of fandom inspiration. *loves*

“You know that Arthur’s back in town, right?”

Ariadne thumped the heels of her trainers against the doors of the cabinet she had perched on, filling the garage with a great, hollow banging noise.  Eames tucked himself further under the hood of the car he was working on and tried not to be distracted.

“I just thought you’d like to know - I mean, since you guys used to be...”

Eames cut her off right there, for the sake of his sanity.  “Don’t you have school to go to?”

Ariadne glanced at her watch.  “Not yet.  Are you going to fix that fan belt?”

It was a terrible shame that Eames couldn’t be crueller to her; partly because her father was his boss, and partly because he actually did like her.

“You can deny it all you want,” she continued, undaunted by Eames’ attempt to overpower her voice by clanging a wrench on a piece of the engine casing.  “But I totally saw you guys making out last summer.”

Last summer was a whole other lifetime ago, as far as Eames was concerned.  Arthur hadn’t even come home over Christmas to visit his parents and siblings; forget about sending any kind of word to Eames.  The fact that Eames still thought about Arthur, every single day, roughly ten months after they had last been in a room together, wasn’t something he wanted to reflect on for too long.

“I didn’t _tell_ anyone if that’s what you’re worried about.  Like I care who you kiss.”

“That’s because it’s none of your bloody business,” Eames gestured threateningly with his wrench as she jumped down from the cabinet and ducked around him to grab her backpack off the floor by the door.  She stuck her tongue out at him as she scurried out the repair bay doors in the direction of the high school.  

“I just thought you’d wanna know!  See you later, Eames!”

“Sod off!” He yelled after her, earning a burst of laughter in response.  With silence in the garage once more, Eames went back to work, grumbling under his breath.  The car was his own, not a customer’s, so he went rough with it, just to let off some steam, knowing he’d have to back it out of the bay when the mechanics got there and go back to answering phones and fetching cups of coffee like a trained monkey.  He hadn’t minded the job, when he’d started last summer, but now it was just another form of torture, because he’d never intended to stick with it as long as he had.

There were a lot of things he had never intended; and they all began and ended with Arthur.

Eames had met Arthur at eleven years old, riding his bike at breakneck speeds down side-streets he hardly knew.  He’d been nothing but angry, then; three weeks in America and missing the sights and sounds of home, missing his mates; hating everything from his new bedroom to the way people talked.

He would have ridden his bike across the ocean that day if he could have.  As it was, he’d pedaled like a madman, until his lungs ached and his legs burned like his veins were full of battery acid. He’d flown past brightly painted houses and carefully kept yards, until he’d hit a pothole and felt the handlebars of his bike pull sideways, out of his control in a heart-stopping instant.  He’d almost side-swiped a van, hadn’t heard the horn blare so much as he’d felt it in the pit of his stomach.  Though he’d tried to compensate, to get the bike back under control, he’d ended up going too far in the opposite direction, hit the sidewalk and bounced over with a force that jolted all the way up his spine; then he’d careened out of control down a grassy embankment.  He remembered jamming his leg down to the ground and the bike spinning sideways, dumping him off and leaving him stunned, staring at a cloudy sky.

As he lay there in the grass, trying to find his breath again, a face had appeared above him - tanned skin, dark eyes, a carefully-trimmed mop of black hair; this was Arthur, who - instead of asking Eames if he was okay - said, “Man, that was so crazy, I thought you were gonna die!” and then helped Eames haul his bike back up the hill and took Eames back to his house to get a bandage for his knee.

Eames had found a distraction from his loneliness in Arthur.  Arthur’s family was in a state of constant chaos; his house - roughly half the size of the one Eames shared with his mother and stepfather - was home to Arthur, his parents, his two older brothers, his older sister, her infant daughter, and two enormous dogs, whose shed hair covered every conceivable surface. It was always noisy and always exciting.  Eames had spent countless afternoons, evenings and overnights in Arthur’s house, where they’d shared Arthur’s bed, head to foot.  

Eames could still remember lying there, in the dark, under the scratchy quilt knitted by Arthur’s grandmother, feeling content as he listened to Arthur breathe.

Looking back, it was no surprise that he had fallen in love with Arthur, though he hadn’t realized it until the spring when he had his appendix out at fifteen.  Eames’ post-surgery recovery had involved a great deal of lying in bed feeling gut-sore and miserable with a lot of bad television to keep him company, until the afternoons, when Arthur would bring him his homework.

“You know, if you were ill, I’d be kind enough not to bring you your homework.”  Eames remembered glaring at Arthur over the top of his maths textbook, shifting a little on the pile of pillows that were all but holding him up just so he could get the best angle.  Arthur looked back at him from where he had perched on the foot of Eames’ bed and shrugged unrepentantly, because he, even back then, he was a bastard.

“You can’t ignore your homework just because you’re sick, Eames.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you were the one gutted like a bloody fish.” Eames groused.  He felt like he’d swallowed fish hooks, or broken glass.  All he wanted to do was wallow in his misery and watch talk show reruns.

“You had your appendix out,” Arthur said, rolling his eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses.  He’d been in dire need of a trip to the barber back then, with a mop of hair down past his chin and almost always in his eyes. “The worst part’s over.”

Eames scowled at his textbook, trying to ignore the throb in his head that matched the one in his stomach.  He was tired and irritated, sick of lying in bed, and numbers always gave him fits.

“Here,” Arthur turned himself around and flopped down on the bed next to Eames, ungraciously stealing one of his pillows and the pencil out of his hand.  “I’ll do this first one, and then you can figure out the rest.  Sound fair?”

Arthur had started working on one of the equations, but Eames’ mind was somewhere else.  He’d been able to smell Arthur’s shampoo, and whatever cologne or aftershave he’d been wearing - rich and musky-sweet.  He’d looked at the downy hairs on Arthur’s arm and wondered what Arthur would do if he ran his fingers over them, felt the overwhelming urge to press his nose into the crook of Arthur’s neck where he could see the divot of his collarbone under the collar of his shirt.

“Eames?” Arthur nudged his shoulder gently, breaking the spell.  “You know, if you really don’t feel well, I can come back and help you with this later.”

“No.” Eames forced himself to sit up straighter, not lean against Arthur’s shoulder.  He’d focused on the page and picked out one of the word problems.  “Show me how this one goes.”

Arthur propped Eames’ notebook on his knees, and went to work.  The result spun out across the page like a ball of yarn unravelling, and Eames’ eyes crossed just trying to keep up.

“That doesn’t make any bloody sense,” he protested.  “How can you get fourteen and I get all these extra bits?”

Arthur laughed, “it’s called ‘order of operations,’ Eames.”

Eames snatched the book from Arthur’s hands and flipped to the back.  “You’re taking the piss, I know it.  I’m checking the answers.”

“Go ahead.”  Arthur’s grin made it obvious that Eames was going to be wrong, but he tried anyway.  He’d ended up glowering at the answer key for five solid minutes before Arthur took pity on him.

“Here, look, I’ll do another one.”

Arthur had ended up doing the whole page for him that afternoon, and another page the next day, and the day after that.  By then, Eames had fantasized about everything from the ridges of bone in Arthur’s wrist to the stretch of tendon in his ankle, and all hope had been well and truly gone.

There was a difference, of course, between being lovelorn and being stupid.  He had never intended to act on the way he felt about Arthur; and once that ship had sailed, he’d certainly never intended for it to end so terribly.

If Eames was honest, he could admit that it had exactly begun under the best of circumstances.  Spring of their senior year, Arthur had gone to the annual formal with Christine Price, and something in Eames had become hopelessly twisted by the event.  It wasn’t jealousy so much as a feeling of personal failure, of having missed out on something because of his own stupidity.

Instead of getting a date of his own, which would have been smart and not all that difficult - Eames was well-liked, and he’d never had any trouble winning people over - Eames had decided not to go the dance at all; he’d entrenched himself at home and had been determined to simply wait until it was over.

How he’d ended up at the school anyway, still remained a mystery.

The doors of the gym were already closed by the time Eames got there.  There was always a no late admittance policy that the teachers and chaperones were apparently very strict about.  Since there’s been no easy way to get in the front, Eames had gone round the side of the school building to the fire exit, where students and teachers alike ducked out between classes for a quick fag, with half a thought in his head that maybe, just maybe, it might provide him a way of slipping inside.  It wasn’t until he got there that he remembered that there was no handle on the outside.

There seemed little Eames could do at the time but lean back against the brick wall and light up a cigarette for himself.  He was halfway through it when the fire exit door banged open, spilling light onto the sidewalk and clipping Eames in the shoulder, nearly knocking him arse over teakettle.  

“Oy!” He barked, defensively.  “Would you watch where you’re going?”

“Eames?”  The door clanged shut, and between the pain in his arm and the sudden, renewed darkness, Eames couldn’t see for a moment.  Still, he recognized the answering voice well enough.

“Arthur?”  It definitely _was_ Arthur.  He was wearing a tie and a suit jacket that had probably once belonged to one of his older brothers, since it didn’t fit quite right. He had also done something to his shaggy hair that made it look neater without it ever having to come into contact with a pair of scissors, though it still had those curls at the base of Arthur’s neck that made Eames question everything he’d ever wanted in his life.

“I thought you weren’t coming to the dance,” Arthur said, touching the closed door almost self-consciously, as if willing there to be a handle there that he could grab onto.

“I’m not,” Eames replied, bending down to retrieve his dropped cigarette from the sidewalk, and to get his eyes off Arthur for a moment.  “At the dance, I mean.  And neither are you.  Shouldn’t you be at the dance?”

“I guess not.” Arthur reached over, and plucked the cigarette from between Eames’ fingers, in a movement so quick and precise that Eames couldn’t think to try and stop him.  He put it to his lips, took a drag, and grimaced.  “That’s disgusting.”

“No one told you to take it, you wanker.”  Eames snatched the cigarette back, but found he wasn’t particularly interested in finishing it, so he flicked it away into the grass instead.  “Where’s Christine?”

Arthur shrugged, in an easy, dismissive way that Eames had recognized meant that he didn’t really give a toss.  “Still inside.  With her ex-boyfriend.”

“That’s rough, mate.”  Eames wanted to be supportive, he really did, but there was a part of him that was immensely relieved to know that he wouldn’t be losing Arthur to Christine Price. 

“You know I only asked her because our moms work together, right?”  Arthur hadn’t even looked at Eames when he said it.  “It’s not like I -”

“Like her?” Eames finished, ignoring how juvenile it sounded; as if they were fifth-graders again, running around on the playground, marrying each other behind the swings.

Eames had been briefly playground-married to a girl named Lily Turner, until she’d decided he had cooties and that she liked Martin Shaw better, because he shared his pudding with her at lunch.

“You’re an idiot,” Arthur said suddenly, letting his head fall back against the brick.  “You’re such and idiot and I can’t believe -”

Eames had tried to cut him off with something in defence of himself, but Arthur had turned, grabbing Eames by the front of his shirt and almost pulling him off balance.  The way his eyes glinted in the darkness, almost wild, Eames thought they were going to start throwing punches at each other, but instead, Arthur had hauled Eames in and crushed their mouths together.

It was different, and yet infinitely better than Eames had ever imagined kissing Arthur would be; slippery and warm, with Arthur’s body pressed up against his and Arthur’s hands tangled in his shirt like he was never going to let go.  When Arthur finally did drag himself away for air, Eames trailed after him, as helpless as a charmed snake.  

Everything after that moment was more or less a blur of lust.  They _were_ teenage boys after all, and Eames’ mother and stepfather conveniently chose that summer to visit relatives back in England for six weeks.  Eames was able to beg off the holiday, having picked up a summer job; and by the end of June, Eames’ house was theirs.  Of course, he and Arthur had taken full advantage, in every sense of the word.  There was one particular twenty-four hour period Eames recalled hardly leaving the bed. He had lain next to Arthur - face to face at last, instead of head to foot - and traced his fingertips across Arthur’s shoulder blades, down the valley of spine until Arthur had squirmed and protested.

“God - Eames - I’m trying to sleep.”

“I’m not keeping you awake.” Eames pressed his thumb into the little divot just above Arthur’s ass, rubbed his cheek up against Arthur’s shoulder; anything to keep their skin in contact.

“You are,” Arthur mumbled.  “I’m not going to let you molest me in my sleep.”

“Molest?” Eames laughed.  “Since when am I molesting you?”

He squirmed in closer and slung a leg over Arthur’s thighs.  Arthur made a soft noise that wasn’t anything like protest and rubbed his face against the pillow.

“See?” Eames hummed, with his mouth right up against the back of Arthur’s neck where the skin smelled musky-sweet and tasted like salt.  “You love it, darling.”

And perhaps Eames had been lured into a false sense of security, living so easily with Arthur that summer. He’d forgotten how easily things could change, almost between one heartbeat and the next.  If he’d remembered, then when he’d heard from Arthur’s sister that Arthur had been accepted to school in California, it would have still ached like a bullet wound, but it wouldn’t have come as a complete surprise.

“You weren’t going to tell me, was that the idea?”

Arthur had been tense, almost vicious as he crammed his clothes into his duffel bag.  Two of the shirts he had shoved into the bag were actually Eames’, but Eames couldn’t bring himself to point it out.

“Of course I wasn’t going to say anything,” Arthur shot back, yanking on the zipper.  When it stuck, he pulled harder, but only succeeded in tearing the fabric of the bag.  “Fuck!”

“Well that’s awfully kind of you,” Eames sneered, resisting the urge to wrap his hands into fists.  The anger had felt like a hot coal in the pit of his stomach, burning its way slowly through his internal organs.  “Maybe if you just don’t mention it, I won’t even notice when you’re gone!”

Arthur’s hands had gone into fists, then, but he hadn’t thrown any punches. It would almost have been easier if he had.  “I wasn’t going to tell you, because I wasn’t going to go!”

As far as Eames was concerned, the only thing more ridiculous than Arthur keeping secrets from him was Arthur turning down a scholarship to one of the best schools in the country.  “Don’t be daft, of _course_ you’re going!”

Arthur’s blind look of hurt was something that would haunt Eames for a long time. “So you’re going to be mad at me for going _and_ mad at me for staying - how the hell is that fair?”

“You should have bigger dreams than being stuck with me, Arthur.  That’s just the truth.”

Arthur’s expression had changed then, from one of pain to one of anger.  “You know what, Eames?” He snarled, grabbing up the duffel and stuffing it awkwardly under one arm, tryin to hold the spill of clothes in.  “Maybe you should come back and talk to me when you’ve pulled your head out of your _ass_.”

And that was the last time they had spoken; Eames had stayed away, mostly out of stubbornness; and since Arthur was equally stubborn, he had gone to California without so much as a farewell text message, validating Eames’ certainty that it was all for the best, and renewing in him that familiar sense of personal failure.  Of course Eames regretted the mess he had made, but there was very little he could do about it except move on.

He tried, very patiently, to explain all this to Ariadne when she returned from school and started pestering him again, but she simply looked at him like he was speaking in some kind of dead language.

“You know you could just apologize, right?”  She extended a hand to him, offering him one of the carrot sticks she was noshing on.

Eames wiped his hand on his coveralls before he took one.  “If only it was that simple, poppet.”

She continued to scowl at him as if he was a particularly challenging puzzle to solve.  “How do you know it’s not?”

“Because I know Arthur.”

Ariadne snorted.  “Not very well.  I mean, you never knew he was totally in love with you.”

Eames dropped the wrench he was holding, which bounced off his boot and banged loudly on the cement floor, leaving Eames braced, cursing, against the hood of a car.

“Jesus bloody tap-dancing Christ, Ariadne!”

Ariadne simply shrugged, and smiled with a bit of carrot between her teeth.  “See, I knew you had no idea.”

If her father hadn’t called to her at that exact moment, Eames might have lost his composure and done something regrettable.  Though losing his temper with Ariadne was still less regrettable than than the fact that he’d been a complete arse to Arthur, and had alienated not only his best friend, but someone who – well, apparently, loved him.

Bloody brilliant.

Eames bent down, picked up the wrench, and went to work cleaning up again.  By the time he had finished for the day, he had a headache and a dull, listless throbbing in his injured foot; but he knew what he had to do.  He got in his car - the engine purred enthusiastically now, thanks to his efforts earlier in the day - and drove across town to Arthur’s parents’ house.

The house was very much as Eames remembered it, the lawn in need of a little bit of proper tending, the roof in need of replacement.  He parked on the curb and just sat in his car for a while; he had never considered he might need to shore up his courage just to walk up to Arthur’s front door, but it seemed he did.  By the time he finally got out of the car, he was losing daylight.  He crossed the porch and knocked on the front door, expecting Arthur’s mother or maybe his father to answer - but instead, it was Arthur himself that opened the door.

He had cut his hair since Eames saw him last, ridiculously short, so that it unfortunately accentuated the way that his ears tended to stick out; and he wore jeans with bare feet and a threadbare T-shirt that had once belonged to Eames.  The sight of him made Eames’ heart go too fast and his stomach churn in a way that suggested it very much wanted to turn inside out.

“Eames,” Arthur said.  His voice wasn’t as flat, or as cold as Eames had worried it might be, and he could tell that Arthur was biting in the inside of his cheek; that had always meant he was trying very hard not to let his face betray what he was thinking.

“Arthur.”  Eames paused, swallowed hard and sucked his lower lip between his teeth, biting it just a little too hard.  “I...have been thinking.”  He tried at last.  “And I was wondering if you’d be willing to talk to me a while - now that my head is no longer in my arse.”

It might have been wishful thinking on his part, but Eames was sure he saw the corner of Arthur’s mouth twitch in just the slightest hint of a smile as he moved back and motioned for Eames to step inside in the house.

-End-


End file.
